"Elf-Disclosure" for Aug 2024

August was our first month on the latest pricing, without free trials or free ElfBuckz.

While expenses remained roughly the same, the most obvious change from previous months is.. we covered our cash expenses!

I'd like to say that it's the result of the pricing model update, but I'd caution that it's quite likely that this month's big numbers are an anomaly, for the following reasons:

1. We changed the way the revenue is reported. This months' stats are from the Woocommerce Analytics's "Revenue" report, whereas previous months were calculated based on the older, WooCommerce Reports's "Deposits" report.

We weren't able to use the Revenue report in previous months because free ElfBuckz / trials skewed the data, but in hindsight, the "deposits" report was probably not doing what we thought, and reporting only ElfBuckz deposits (rather than all payments, which I expected).

1. Many users took advantage of prepaid periods when switching over to the new monthly subscription models in August, so it's likely that this revenue represents several months of service, pre-paid, and subsequent months will be missing these values.

To get us started, here are some shiny stats for Aug 2024, followed by a summary of some of the user-facing changes announced this month in the blog...

Stats

Spent Tech stats Growth stats Summary

Money	June 2024	July 2024	Aug 2024
Expense: Cluster	$2,849.32	$2,417	$2,414
Expense: Store	$76	$76	$76
Expense: CI	$100	$100	$100
Expense: Cloud	$20	$30	$30
Expense: Development 3	150h / $22,500	150h / $22,500	150h / $22,500
Expense: OSS Sponsorship 5	$86.30	$538	$695
Total Expenses	$25,580	$25,651 ($3,151 cash)	$25,815 ($3,315 cash)
Income	$1,215 7	$1,752	$7,700
Income % of cash expenses	39.4%	56.6%	232%
Income % of all expenses	4.75%	6.8%	29.8%

Focus	Jun 2024	Jul 2024	Aug 2024
Subscribers	370	1754	243
Ingress	296TB	180TB6	118TB
Egress	100TB	74TB	46TB
Pods	3188	23248	3035

Focus	Jun 2024	Jul 2024	Aug 2024
Unique visitors2	21.7K	25.6K	36.7K
Total pageviews2	62.6K	70.2K	96.7K
Discord members	1056	1198	1411
YouTube subscribers	131	188	302

Focus	May 2024	Jun 2024	Jul 2024
Total invested thus far 1	$181,899	$207,550	$233,365
Total revenue	$9,686	$11,438	$19,138
Income % of total invested	5.32%	5.51%	8.2%

Resources

NAME       CPU(cores)   CPU%   MEMORY(bytes)   MEMORY%
elf01      4732m        29%    37966Mi         29%
elf02      4606m        28%    72359Mi         56%
elf03      6338m        39%    68418Mi         53%
elf04      5252m        32%    66787Mi         51%
fairy01    333m         2%     29793Mi         23%
fairy02    3105m        19%    66423Mi         51%
fairy03    669m         4%     32951Mi         25%
gnome01    1645m        20%    31897Mi         49%
gnome02    812m         10%    21018Mi         32%
gnome03    1113m        13%    20071Mi         31%
goblin04   977m         8%     65694Mi         51%
goblin05   745m         6%     61605Mi         47%
goblin06   748m         6%     60959Mi         47%
hobbit01   2702m        16%    31086Mi         24%
hobbit02   2553m        15%    38650Mi         30%
hobbit03   2678m        16%    29243Mi         22%
hobbit04   1720m        10%    27237Mi         21%
hobbit05   1403m        8%     32276Mi         25%
hobbit06   2197m        13%    33353Mi         25%
hobbit07   282m         1%     29300Mi         22%
hobbit08   3565m        22%    32240Mi         25%
hobbit09   2992m        18%    36826Mi         28%
hobbit10   1855m        11%    23843Mi         18%
hobbit11   5561m        34%    42420Mi         32%
ranger01   2434m        15%    40497Mi         31%
ranger02   3254m        20%    31510Mi         24%
ranger03   2408m        15%    29345Mi         22%
ranger04   1459m        9%     25206Mi         19%
ranger05   1573m        9%     32525Mi         25%
ranger06   3676m        22%    29718Mi         23%
ranger07   1340m        8%     16793Mi         13%
ranger08   3016m        18%    20714Mi         16% 

NAME       CPU(cores)   CPU%   MEMORY(bytes)   MEMORY%
elf01      3749m        23%    53480Mi         41%
elf02      6799m        42%    45302Mi         35%
elf03      3414m        21%    45386Mi         35%
elf04      3166m        19%    50856Mi         39%
elf05      1824m        11%    41107Mi         31%
elf06      2699m        16%    46083Mi         35%
elf07      3749m        23%    43513Mi         33%
elf08      3127m        19%    47867Mi         37%
fairy01    828m         5%     39574Mi         30%
fairy02    619m         3%     37580Mi         29%
fairy03    896m         5%     61504Mi         47%
gnome01    968m         12%    30996Mi         48%
gnome02    430m         5%     10610Mi         16%
gnome03    557m         6%     14004Mi         21%
goblin04   673m         5%     70940Mi         55%
goblin05   296m         2%     52449Mi         40%
goblin06   418m         3%     56075Mi         43%
hobbit01   245m         1%     18583Mi         14%
hobbit02   1151m        7%     19032Mi         14%
hobbit03   763m         4%     17784Mi         13%
hobbit04   1759m        10%    16260Mi         12%
hobbit05   821m         5%     17705Mi         13%
hobbit06   1091m        6%     15661Mi         12%
hobbit07   33m          0%     3419Mi          2%
ranger01   2119m        13%    16872Mi         13%
ranger02   192m         1%     17980Mi         13%
ranger03   365m         2%     19527Mi         15%
ranger04   1730m        10%    17387Mi         13%
ranger05   538m         3%     22956Mi         17%
ranger06   135m         0%     11686Mi         9% 

NAME       CPU(cores)   CPU%   MEMORY(bytes)   MEMORY%
elf01      4732m        29%    37966Mi         29%
elf02      4606m        28%    72359Mi         56%
elf03      6338m        39%    68418Mi         53%
elf04      5252m        32%    66787Mi         51%
fairy01    333m         2%     29793Mi         23%
fairy02    3105m        19%    66423Mi         51%
fairy03    669m         4%     32951Mi         25%
gnome01    1645m        20%    31897Mi         49%
gnome02    812m         10%    21018Mi         32%
gnome03    1113m        13%    20071Mi         31%
goblin04   977m         8%     65694Mi         51%
goblin05   745m         6%     61605Mi         47%
goblin06   748m         6%     60959Mi         47%
hobbit01   2702m        16%    31086Mi         24%
hobbit02   2553m        15%    38650Mi         30%
hobbit03   2678m        16%    29243Mi         22%
hobbit04   1720m        10%    27237Mi         21%
hobbit05   1403m        8%     32276Mi         25%
hobbit06   2197m        13%    33353Mi         25%
hobbit07   282m         1%     29300Mi         22%
hobbit08   3565m        22%    32240Mi         25%
hobbit09   2992m        18%    36826Mi         28%
hobbit10   1855m        11%    23843Mi         18%
hobbit11   5561m        34%    42420Mi         32%
ranger01   2434m        15%    40497Mi         31%
ranger02   3254m        20%    31510Mi         24%
ranger03   2408m        15%    29345Mi         22%
ranger04   1459m        9%     25206Mi         19%
ranger05   1573m        9%     32525Mi         25%
ranger06   3676m        22%    29718Mi         23%
ranger07   1340m        8%     16793Mi         13%
ranger08   3016m        18%    20714Mi         16% 

NAME       CPU(cores)   CPU%   MEMORY(bytes)   MEMORY%
elf01      3749m        23%    53480Mi         41%
elf02      6799m        42%    45302Mi         35%
elf03      3414m        21%    45386Mi         35%
elf04      3166m        19%    50856Mi         39%
elf05      1824m        11%    41107Mi         31%
elf06      2699m        16%    46083Mi         35%
elf07      3749m        23%    43513Mi         33%
elf08      3127m        19%    47867Mi         37%
fairy01    828m         5%     39574Mi         30%
fairy02    619m         3%     37580Mi         29%
fairy03    896m         5%     61504Mi         47%
gnome01    968m         12%    30996Mi         48%
gnome02    430m         5%     10610Mi         16%
gnome03    557m         6%     14004Mi         21%
goblin04   673m         5%     70940Mi         55%
goblin05   296m         2%     52449Mi         40%
goblin06   418m         3%     56075Mi         43%
hobbit01   245m         1%     18583Mi         14%
hobbit02   1151m        7%     19032Mi         14%
hobbit03   763m         4%     17784Mi         13%
hobbit04   1759m        10%    16260Mi         12%
hobbit05   821m         5%     17705Mi         13%
hobbit06   1091m        6%     15661Mi         12%
hobbit07   33m          0%     3419Mi          2%
ranger01   2119m        13%    16872Mi         13%
ranger02   192m         1%     17980Mi         13%
ranger03   365m         2%     19527Mi         15%
ranger04   1730m        10%    17387Mi         13%
ranger05   538m         3%     22956Mi         17%
ranger06   135m         0%     11686Mi         9%      

Retrospective

US Cluster trial / progress

While waiting for the dust to settle on the repricing / monthly subscriptions changes, we progressed the US cluster design, to the point that we've had several "live" users on it for weeks now.

The final cluster is being assembled by the datacenter (they're busy with it right now), which will give us a minimum viable starter of 1 fairy (control plane), 1 hobbit (⅛th dedicated), 1 ranger (¼th dedicated), and 1 elf (contended workloads). The final cluster is running different hardware to the trial cluster (E3-1270v5 "micro-clouds" with Intel Quicksync support for transcoding), so we'll need another testing period before making them generally available.

If you'd like to gauge whether the US cluster would be more suitable for your workloads, visit https://speed.elfhosted.com and perform some comparative tests!

Feedback results

In order to discover what we need to improve, we did our first round of "feedback" during Aug, using a new (to us) open-source form tool, FormBricks.

92 users responded, and 57 of those completed the survey. The results were both enlightening and sobering.

Here are a few facts we discovered:

• The majority (66%) of our users found us via Reddit
• The primary feedback on what could be improved was the UX of the docs and the store.
• App requests include Doplarr (manage media requests via Discord), Wizarr (manage invites), and Immich (Google Photos alternative).
• The recent pricing changes drove some long-term users away, but in general users believe the pricing to be fair and value for money.
• Most popular requests were better bandwidth/latency (for streaming performance), and more reliability of tools like Riven
• Our net-promoter-score was basically neutral (below)

While I tried to follow up on all the feedback individually, in some cases I wasn't able to because I neglected to capture contact details in the (anonymous) survey If you've got feedback, and I haven't contacted you to discuss, please feel free to reach out!

Here are a few questions / answers hand-picked from feedback:

Why are even simple CNAMEs or storage mounts priced at $9/month in the store?

1. Because messing them up can wreck your entire stack, and you'd have an expectation of support from our team, and we're not doing that for free.
2. Because when app prices are the same, you can easily "switch between" apps at zero cost. So you can switch out a CNAME for another app to trial for a few days, and then switch it out again for a third. You can also "upgrade" to more expensive apps, and the store will pro-rate the difference.

Can I run ElfHosted on my own hardware?

No, because (1) our clusters include secrets (extractable with root access) for things like our S3 buckets, CloudFlare logins, etc, and (2) we deliberately provision extra hardware such that in the event of a node failure, we have enough capacity to run 100% of customer workloads on the remaining nodes. To replicate this with your own hardware, such that our support overheads would be minimized, you'd need 2 nodes, minimum.

Isn't $9/month a little high for some of these apps?

ElfHosted's "killer feature" is our community support, which is driven by volunteers and staff (and a slightly whacky AI bot), all of which consume resources (time, money, personal attention).

Your $9/month (equivalant to 2 regular cups of coffee or one craft beer in NZ) covers not just the infrastructure costs to run each app, but also the time, attention, and goodwill of the support team keeping the lights on!

Coming up

No-Piracy Policy

We skirt a fine line, between providing users with self-hosted apps, under their own control, and being seen as assisting with copyright infringement. While we don't want to detract from our 5-star support reputation, the ElfVengers and I are going to start being more circumspect in a few areas...

No more staff access to your apps

We no longer have the tools / privileges to directly access your apps. This means our staff cannot know how you have them configured, cannot see what you're doing with them, and cannot effect changes to your apps, other than resetting them to defaults.

While this may make it more difficult for us to "nudge" you to the correct config, it's important to maintain our position as a neutral infrastructure provider. Where we've been relying on "quickly fixing it for you" if something breaks, we'll have to do a better job of documenting or setting global defaults.

Sensitive data to be redacted

As has always been the case (but we've been lax in enforcing), we can't share unredacted screenshots / texts in our Discord which include any infringing content. We will start actively deleting these when they occur.

We understand that this may frustrate debugging / support efforts, and may require something of a culture shift. We want to maintain our sterling support reputation, but not at the cost of liability, so any support in our official channels has to remain within reasonable legal bounds. We therefore ask you to be discreet in your support requests, to avoid us having to redact

Store improvements

As is obviously necessary from recent feedback, I'll be paying some attention to the store layout / organization this month. The mobile experience is kinda poor, and (like most things built by us geeks), you only know where to find stuff if you already know where to find stuff.

I'll be trialing a new theme, and improved email / communication options.

More apps

The following new apps are either ready for testing (undocumented), or on the list for this month:

Doplarr

Doplarr is in and working, just not documented yet. We have at least one user happily using it, but it may end up being dethroned by...

Requestrr

Requestrr is a chatbot used to simplify using services like Sonarr/Radarr/Overseerr/Ombi via the use of chat!

Features:

• Ability to request content via Discord using slash commands, buttons and more!
• Users can get notified when their requests complete
• Sonarr (V2-V4) & Radarr (V2-V5) integration with support for multiple instance via Overseerr (only for 4k/1080p)
• Overseerr integration with support for per user permissions/quotas and issue submission
• Ombi (V3/V4) integration with support for per user roles/quotas and issue submission
• Fully configurable via a web portal

Threadfin

Threadfin is a better-but-still-PITA fork of Xteve, letting you bring your IPTV into Plex. It sort-of works, depending on your provider. Again, not documented yet, and YMMV, but you can exercise your 14d refund if it doesn't work out for you!

Immich

Immich is a self-hosted replacement for Google Photos. To use it with ElfHosted, you'd need to have attached storage. Development is underway :)

West's Blackhole Script

West's scripts include a "blackhole" shell script, which replaces the functions of RDTClient. It's dethroned RDTClient in https://savvyguides.wiki, and while some of its functions are redundant to us (Plex requests, etc), having an alternative to RDTCLient seems sensible. Especially one which can use to integrate the Aars with Torbox...

Torbox Teamup

Wamy from Torbox is keen to team up with us on a product bundle / offering to support ElfHosted Torbox users. We're ironing out the details this month, but rather than trying to use Torbox to replace RD for gigantic-library-building, possible applications are:

1. Using your private trackers with the Aars for "infinite streaming Plex", while continuing to seed back and maintain your ratio.
2. Adding a "backup" debrid service for your most critical / popular content, so that you have a fallback in the event of RD rate-limits / changes.
3. Sourcing non-torrent, premium quality from Torbox's usenet sources.

Stay tuned for details!

Your ideas?

Got ideas for improvements? Send us an EEP (ElfHosted Enhancement Proposal) here!

How to help

If you'd like to make a donation in recognition of our infrastructure costs, our open-source resources, or our friendly support, a simple donation product is available at https://store.elfhosted.com/product/elf-love/

Another effective way to help is to drive traffic / organic discovery, by mentioning ElfHosted in appropriate forums such as Reddit's r/plex, r/realdebrid, and r/StremioAddons, which is where much of our target audience is to be found!

Join us!

What users say..

Here's what some of our usersfriends say..

I self host and share a fully automated ‘arr stack with Plex. Been doing so for around 4 years. Also recently got into real debrid and hosting a Comet and Annatar for Stremio. The amount of time and head banging I’ve put into it is in the hundreds to thousands of hours. From setting it up to keeping it running smoothly. Let’s not forget the cost of my server and how much it cost to keep it running.

Anyway I wanted to see what ElfHosted was about to compare. Yeah I had the whole thing setup in just a few hours. It also passes the headache of maintaining it to ElfHosted. Will I keep it no because nerdy things and maintaining my server are my hobby and quirky passion project. Will I recommend it to my friends who don’t have the money up front to buy a server, the knowledge to maintain it or desire.

Just my server alone was $2k. Power cost to keep it on yearly is $250ish, annual memberships to RD, Usenet and indexers are around $100. Then whatever a value my free time at. Which is currently at minimum my hourly pay at work or more. Yeah so take the monthly cost of all that and compare to ElfHosted Ultimate Stream package at $39 monthly, add RD to the cost and get nearly all your time back is incredibly cheap.

Lastly it seems like a lot of people forget how quickly an ultimate cable package used to cost. Or how quick paying for every stream service would add up to. Which when using ElfHosted with RD is essentially and more what you get. Quick hint it’s far above the asking price.

/u/MMag05. (Reddit)

As a happy Elfhosted customer—who also self hosts MANY things across about 10 severs (dedicated, VPSes, and VMs running on Synology), I wouldn’t switch to self hosting the services I get from Elfhosted. They just work with very little effort configuring things, and the support the owner and his team provides is second to none. Plus I love being part of a fledgling—but quickly growing—enterprise.

/u/jatguy. (Reddit)

I recently found ElfHosted and decided to start out with the Infinite Starter Kit. Within a week I realized that this was for me and upgraded to the Hobbit plan. Give it another week and I was up to the Ranger plan.

I just love the simplicity and the fact that things just work. For years I've ran a home server and between the constant maintenance and always upgrading harddrives, it became apparent I wanted to make it easier on my self. Enter ElfHosted.

Setup was super easy with the guided documentation and the discord community. It seems that somebody is available at all hours of the day to help with questions. I started with the Aars, which I knew from my prior hosting... but saw a newer product called Riven. I decided to jump in feet first. I enjoy being on the front end of an up and coming replacement for the Aars and will soon be upgrading to the annual plan!

@.theycallmebob. (Discord)

I’ve been using this service for a while now, and honestly, it’s a game-changer compared to anything else I’ve tried for managing my media library. The support is fantastic—super quick, and if the staff aren’t around (which rarely happens), the community steps up right away. I can’t imagine going back to any other platform.

Before this, I had my own setup with a NUC, NAS, and tools like Sonarr and Radarr. It worked pretty well for a while, and my internet speed was high enough to stream without any buffering. But in the end, it wasn’t worth the time or headache of managing all the storage and keeping everything running smoothly.

Now, with this service, everything runs smoothly in 1080p+ with no buffering issues. The interface is really easy to use, which makes managing everything a breeze. Plus, having a whole community of smart people available for guidance is a huge bonus.

I was sold from the start, which is why I quickly upgraded from a 1-month to a 3-month subscription, and I’m planning to switch to a 1-year plan soon. This service totally pays for itself, and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. It’s been really impressive.

@seapound (Discord)

Best possible options for anyone looking for the do-it-all option along with the best customer service ive experienced in this space so far. Id rate it a 6 if I could but its limited to 5/5...

@hashmelters (Discord)

(responding to a Reddit thread re the cost of ElfHosted vs mainstream streaming / self-hosting):

I didn't know that the goal of this project was to compete with large companies running/renting entire DCs. I was under the impression that the goal of this project was to manage the updating of almost selfhosted applications on a shared platform with other users. Basically, be my sysadmin for me.

That being said, paying for services is the 'easy button'. There is a real world cost incurred for the time saved. Time is money. Time is the most valuable currency that exists. Once time is spent, it's forever lost, one cannot retrieve it again (yet). In my mind, there are 3 options for use of time with respect to: mainstream, selfhosting, elfhosted.

• mainstream - my time is valuable and I don't want curated content and I don't care what content that I have the ability to consume. I only like what's popular.

• elfhosted - my time is valuable, I want my own curated content without being forced to browse past the same damn entry 500 times just to find out that I can't watch the movie I want because it's not available in my current location or was removed last week from mainstream providers.

• selfhost - I care about costs and I have nothing but time to waste or I want to learn about the backend of the systems involved. I'll pay for my own VPS/homelab, electricity, manage the OS, manage app updates, figure out how to make the apps talk nice to each other, create my own beautiful frontend.

I know how much my time is worth, does that reddit poster know how much their time is worth? Without knowing what you are worth, you can't make effective capital expenditures with respect to the time it will take to recoup the capital.

I know I don't need elfhosted at all for my use case. I choose to stay with elfhosted because it's my 'easy button'. It's an efficient capital expense for the amount of time it saves me managing my own hardware, apps and saves me electricity costs. I'm also in a situation where I don't have upload bandwidth from my home to serve HD content to myself remotely. If I lived back in a city, I would still be here. My time is worth $$/hr.

@cobra2 (Discord)

"Just wanted to check in here and let @Darth-Penguini and anyone/everyone else know...WOW. I have been struggling with storage for years, maintenance of Docker containers, upkeep, all of it. Elfhosted is so freeing. It's an amazing service that I hope to be a member of for a long, long time!"

@Fingers91 (Discord)

"I just have to say, I am an incredibly satisfied customer. I had been collecting my own content for nearly 20 years. Starting off with just a simple external HD before eventually graduating to a seedbox with 100TB of cloud storage attached and fully automated processes with Sonarr and Radarr . However, the time came when the glory days of unlimited Google Drive storage ended. I thought my days of having my full collection at my fingertips via :plex: were behind me, until I found Real-Debrid and ElfHosted.

Now I essentially have the exact same access to content as I had before, but even better. Superior support and community involvement. Content is available almost immediately after being identified. A plethora of tools at my fingertips that give me more control and automation than ever before. Wonderfully well done and impressive! I am looking forward to being a customer for a very long time! Massive kudos to @funkypenguin 🤟

@BSM (Discord)

"I would recommend ElfHosted to anyone. It has been great so far and made life a lot easier than running my own setups. If you’re in the fence give them a try and help support this great community."

Zestyclose_Teacher20 (Reddit)

"thanks for the help and must say this is the best host I every had for my server 🙂 10/10 🙂 All other places I have try have I got a lot buff etc. Your host can even give me full power on a 4K Remux on 200GB big movie file . That's damn awesome 😄"

@tjelite (Discord)

"What an amazing support system these guys have Chris and Layzee i think it was! Both are very patient with me even though I am a newbie at all this. Very thorough and explained everything step by step with me

I couldn’t ask for anything better than the service I have received by these guys! Happy happy client❤️"

@dead.potahto (Discord)

"Very happy customer. Great service"

@ronney67 (Discord)

"Very good customer service, frequent updates, and excelent uptime!!!!!"

@ed.guim (Discord)

"I had my own plex-arrs setup on hetzner for years. Yesterday I deleted everything as elfhosted has gone above and beyond it. And it has a fantastic, active community as well! Very friendly, helpful and like-minded folks always willing to help and improve the system. Top notch!"

@alon.hearter (Discord)

"Absolutely Amazed with the patience and professionalism of all Elf-Venger Staff including bossman penguin❤️"

@dead.potahto (Discord)

"@BSM went above and beyond to make sure I had all the one on one support needed with my sub. Thank you for your patience! Elfhosted continues to be Elftastic !!"

@bfmc1 (Discord)

"really enjoying the service from elfhosted. The setup is really easy from the guides on the website. And the help on the discord channel is really quick."

@jrhd13 (Discord)

"Support is amazing, and once you find a setup which works best for you it works perfectly, very happy 😊"

@fiendclub (Discord)

"great fast service, resolved my problem and really friendly"

@allan.st.minimum (Discord)

"Great service and sorted out a billing issue super quick and easy."

@scottcall707 (Discord)

"Very friendly support, resolved a problem with my account! I also appreciate the community that has been built around the service!"

@leo1305 (Discord)

"excellent customer service and very fast replies"

@yo.hohoho (Discord)

"Loved the simplicity, experience and support"

@y.adhish (Discord)

"Very friendly help as always, problem solved, one happy elf here!"

@badfurday0 (Discord)

"Great Helpful and Fast support. Thanks!"

@.mxrcy (Discord)